I don't agree with the troll, and points 1 and 3 are correct, but #2 is both misleading and most of it barely qualifies as science.

Social sciences are by their very nature extremely inaccurate and extremely prone to study biases.

Hard science is still majority published by men. There isn't a real reason for this beyond cultural, and actual real gender differences. Women generally end up having more interest outside of STEM and most women, at least in most first world countries, finding the Sciences rather bo

I was under the impression that maneuvers like this happen every few months or so, so this really isn't a big deal at all. In fact, TFA says so:

NASA and its space station partners regularly move the space station when a piece of debris is expected to pass inside a preset safety perimeter. That safety zone is shaped like a pizza box and extends out 15 miles (25 kilometers) to either side, as well as a half-mile (0.75 km) above and below the station.

I was under the impression that maneuvers like this happen every few months or so, so this really isn't a big deal at all.

What makes it somewhat of a big deal is that this is occurring so close to a resupply launch, especially because this is the first official commercial resupply launch (although, as you and the fancy article point out, it isn't really a big deal).

... and a price tag 2x - 4x more than any other company would normally charge for the same thing. You pay extra for that Apple logo. There may be some quality customer service and reliability with the logo worth the added cost, but nothing since the Apple II+ was very price competitive.

I still like the original oak cases of the Apple I computers though. That was real class.... and a design by Steve Jobs I might add as well.

The Apple II+ was more expensive than other PCs at the time. It was the first computer i bought.

But price competitiveness is a difficult thing to compare as we are not comparing apples to apples (pun intended). So if the product is not the same how can you say the price is wrong? This might be true for comparing a PC today to another PC but even those offer different features, perhaps soft features like resale value, support, reliability etc. Given that most Apple computers were good value and definitel

It would not accept resupply from space ships of other companies/agencies... It would be able to do only one thing at a time and have rounded corners. Radio reception would be spotty at best. Nasa would have to sue every other countries because thay too have stuff in space that orbits, but it would be shiny and hippy. Seriously, we dont need that, he did enough damage already!

What also makes it a big deal is the source... Space.com - a website dedicated to space news. They're no different than any other news site in that they have to generate new content on a regular basis, and manned space, commercial space, and potential disasters are all great hit count generators. All three together make an irresistible trifecta.

My guess would be the limitations of radar. It is fairly easy to peg the orbital altitude from ground radar. However, it takes several readings to get the entire orbital ephemeris, especially if the object is small. As the parent post said, an object in orbit is travelling at much greater speeds horizontally than vertically, so the margin for error is greater horizontally rather than vertically.

It's to prevent a blitz-attack by spaceballs. The more ludicrous the shape of the safety zone around the space station, the slower the spaceball attack must be. Due to quantum conservation of ludicrousness. Well known fact.

"forward deflector array" ? Modded informative ?!?The international space station is a real thing in orbit around the earth with real people on board.Deflector shields are not real. Star trek is fiction, Captain Kirk was an actor in front of some cameras.

The ISS orbits just 400 km above the ground, and experiences enough atmospheric drag to require periodic boosts back into higher orbit. About the only debris of concern is moving horizontally when it reaches the altitude of the ISS, anything that goes past it to lower altitudes hits atmosphere and quickly gets removed from orbit.

Because it has "space" in the story, it seems interesting, but really, considering the amount of space junk out there and the now-familiar processes and procedures to avoid it, this is mostly boring stuff.